The Lady

First and foremost, HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY MARCUS!! You are now officially and legally an adult. Blessed birthday to you!

As Marcus's mum has decided to buy him a new violin for his 21st birthday, I brought him back to AmberCraft Violins, where he first fell in love with The Old German (p.s. these violin names are thought up by Marcus and I. We have a knack of giving names to violins, be it good or bad) So we decided to go back and see if The Old German is still around. After booking an appointment with Ming Xi (violin luthier) we headed down to his shop with our violins. His, for comparison with the new violins and mine, for a maintenance check.

As usual, I'm always very happy to visit MX's shop, cos his violins are simply exquisite. And it's the only time I get to try out violins that are really really really expensive. Furthermore, I always learn something new about violins each time I talk to him. And as usual, every time I visit his shop, I fall in love with a new violin. Today, I fell in love with The Lady.

The Lady (again, self-named =P) is aptly named for its incredibly sweet tone. It is not too bright and as MX said, very kind to the ears. It is a rich dark brown colour. It looks very old, very exquisite and reminds me of a very sweet, prim and proper Victorian lady. It was the 3rd violin that Marcus tried out. After he tried it out, I had my turn. When my bow struck the first note, I felt like I was going to melt. I played out the D major scale, and then I was in love. Such sweet lovely tones.

So anyway, Marcus tried out quite a couple of violins, finally narrowing it down to 2. At the same time I had my violin checked out too. And MX asked if I wanted to raise my fingerboard. Indeed, a few years ago I had approached him about the problem, only that I asked if he could lower the bridge instead. Haha. But apparently, one ought to raise the fingerboard instead of lowering the bridge. So hmm, should I?

British English

After years of tolerating those squiggly red lines, I finally set the language of my Microsoft Word to British English.

No more squiggly red lines!

Carpe Diem

Being the 'sua gu' that I sometimes can be, I'd just discovered last night that aside from audio CDs, one can borrow DVDs from the Esplanade Library as well. Ecstatic and quite overcome with excitement, I'd proceeded to their vast collection of DVDs with Xiu Xian (XX) and Jon. After awhile, I picked out 2 movies, "Dead Poets Society" and "Music and Lyrics".

Why did I choose those two movies? Well, while reading fanfiction one fine day, I'd came across the phrase "Carpe diem", and a fellow reviewer asked if the author got it from "Dead Poets Society". A lover of poetry, I was intrigued by the title and it also kinda rang a bell in my head. So I googled it and thought it seemed like a really good movie. So I wanted to watch it. And as for "Music and Lyrics", I'd always wanted to watch it ever since I heard the song "Way Back Into Love".

"Music and Lyrics" was all right. It was an enjoyable light-hearted sort of movie, but nothing very impressionable or impactful. Except that I absolutely adore Hugh Grant's British accent!

Okay Hugh Grant and British accents aside, I went on to watch "Dead Poets Society". It is about an English Teacher, Mr John Keating, who has rather unorthodox teaching methods, at this really prestigious, conservative and expensive prep school for boys, Welton Academy. So through his very interesting teaching methods, Mr Keating strives to bring across the message to break out of a life of rigid conformity. And indeed, he does change the lives of his students. The final scene of the movie was so poignant it brought tears to my eyes. I re-winded and re-watched the scene no less than 5 times. After which I decided to climb atop my coffee table and take a look around my living room (um, only those who've watched the movie would actually understand this). It was a really really touching movie. Not to mention Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke were extremely cute!

"Oh Captain, my Captain!"

I had a lot of fun listening to the boys recite poetry. There was a scene where one of the boys was trying to impress girls with Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, when he turned to another girl and was about to start off with another poem, somehow, I'd guessed that he was gonna recite Lord Byron's "She Walks In Beauty". AND I WAS RIGHT! For the next words out of his mouth were "She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies".

Needless to say, I had a VERY satisfying and rather insane couch-pounding moment. *laughs*

Well, CARPE DIEM!!

The Clinic

It was with great anticipation that the 5 of us (Poh, Philip, Ying Hui, Xiu Xian and I) met today at Clarke Quay for dinner and the insanity that we had planned for our drinking session afterwards. A friend of XX's had recommended this ramen restaurant at The Central @ Clarke Quay called Marutama Ramen, so we decided to give it a shot.

When our ramen arrived and we all started to take our first bite, you could hear the swift intake of breath as you watch the expression change on your friend's face. It was... an out-of-the-world ramen experience!! It was truly the BEST ramen I'd ever tasted!! The soup was absolutely delicious!! And the noodles were great too! There was a piece of char siew in my bowl of ramen and it totally MELTS in your mouth! There's also their famous egg. It looks like an ordinary hard boiled egg, but the moment you bit into it... lOLLL. Suffice to say Poh's reaction was totally hilarious cos he couldn't believe it tasted SO GOOD. The outermost layer of the egg is hard boiled. As you bite in, the middle layer is slightly softer and right in the middle where the yolk is, is the softest part of the egg. I honestly have no idea how they managed to cook the egg like that! So yes, hands down, best ramen I'd ever tasted in Singapore.

After dinner, we walked over to The Clinic! The Clinic is this open-air pub/bar that has a hospital/clinic-like setting. Some of the tables had wheelchairs as chairs and there were other tables that resembled gigantic pills. Some of their specialty drinks include Sex on a Drip, which is an alcoholic beverage served in an IV bag connected to a drip. Yes, you drink from the drip. There are also shots served in syringes and the likes. The waiters and waitresses who serve your drinks are also clad in scrubs. Some even have a stethoscope hanging around their necks. So, being science students, we thought it was REALLY COOL, and we decided to play along by wearing our lab coats.



Honestly, I think this is one of the craziest things I've ever done in my life thus far. I mean when we were dressed in our lab coats and sitting there, sipping at our rum and vodka, people walking by were literally staring. LOLLL. Some even took photographs of us! It was a little embarrassing. Oh gosh. But we didn't wear our lab coats for long. It was way too warm. We took it off after we took our photos. And I can't believe the 5 of us actually nearly finished drinking FOUR JUGS of vodka and rum. FOUR jugs. Four JUGS. It is quite unfathomable. And those jugs weren't small. We played a LOT of drinking games, laughed a lot and discovered many dirty secrets about each other. Poor XX vomited after that though. I think she went over her alcohol tolerance limit. We all started discussing about enzymes and alcohol dehydrogenase and lactate and chemical formulas of Ethanol after that. Until Poh went all "No more enzymes!! No more chemical formulas!! School is OVER!!". So we shut up. Hahahahaha. But oh boy, what a night!

Life-changing moment?

At long last, the dreaded exams are over (which explains my presence on the Internet at such an unearthly hour. Actually not really, I sleep at unearthly hours all the time, exams or no exams. Okay, that's besides the point). My last paper ended on Tuesday, 7pm. Before that I had wanted the exams to be over so much that I thought when the exam invigilator said "stop writing", it would be a life-changing moment.

That life-changing moment didn't come.

Sure I'd felt relief and all, because honestly, it was a rather awful paper. I finished it in about an hour (the paper was supposed to be 2 hours), not because it was fantastically easy, but because I didn't know how to answer some of the questions and was reduced to making intelligent guesses. So I sat there, freezing all my body parts off in the frigid exam hall (Are they trying to give us brain freeze? Honestly, I was turning blue, literally (my fingernails were becoming a most alarming shade of blue), and shivering like a lump of jelly in my seat, chattering teeth and all).

No, that moment wasn't life-changing. But it was simply plain old relief accompanied by a sigh.

After which, we (Poh, Marilyn, Ying Hui, Philip and I) proceeded to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant at Dhoby Ghout, which was delicious, except for the ramen I ordered, which well, wasn't all that delicious. But I was famished. So I ate it.

After dinner, it was about 9.30pm, so we decided to go Minds Cafe to play board games. Besides, it was Ladies' Night. We all had a lot of fun playing Big Taboo, some hand-sign reaction game and Ugly Dolls. My my, I had a fine time screaming. And I found out just how lousy I am at reaction games. Haha.